Embodiments of the invention relate generally to information processing, and more particularly, to a method, system, and storage medium for providing web information processing services utilizing social filtering and chaining functions.
Information is one of an organization's main sources of competitive advantage. It can enable a company to find an opportunity, identify and correct a liability, or provide input to the kind of synthesis that moves it forward. This is true today more than ever. The sources and range of information are expanding exponentially. Ironically, however, this increasing volume of information has a parallel trend in obscurity of information. The more information there is available, the harder it becomes to focus on the sources and subjects that are relevant.
A significant resource for obtaining information is the World Wide Web (Web). Web users utilize web browser programs and search engines for acquiring and processing desired information. There are two main activities associated with web information processing: aggregation and categorization. Aggregation is concerned with pulling together and representing collections of source data. Aggregation of source data can take different forms, which sometimes makes it difficult to process efficiently. However, the emerging acceptance of standards for syndicating aggregations makes the automated processing of aggregations of web data possible. A large number of websites now provide standardized feeds, and formatting of weblog information into a standardized form is native to most weblogging (blogging) software.
The second aspect, categorization, is the process of giving the source data context relative to a set of key words or a taxonomy. Categorization can be accomplished automatically via software or manually by human involvement. Search engines and Web directories operate via aggregation and categorization; bookmarks are an example of human-driven categorization. Aggregation and categorization of data may be presented as a domain of data sources.
It would be desirable to provide a system for utilizing aggregation and categorization tools to personalize and share domain information with other individuals or entities.